'Female heroes': celebrity executives as postfeminist role models

This article explores the significance of contemporary celebrity businesswomen as role models for women aspiring to leadership in business. We explore the kind of gendered ideals they model and promote to women through their autobiographical narratives, and analyze how these ideals map against contemporary postfeminist sensibility to further understand the potential of these role models to redress the under-representation of women in management and leadership . Our findings show that celebrity businesswomen present a role model that we call the ‘female hero’, a figure characterized by 3Cs: confidence to jump over gendered barriers, control in managing these barriers, and courage to push through them. We argue that the ‘female hero’ role model is deeply embedded in the contemporary postfeminist sensibility; it offers exclusively individualized solutions by calling on women to change themselves to succeed, and therefore has limited capacity to challenge the current gendered status quo in management and leadership. The article contributes to current literature on role models by generating a more differentiated and socially-situated understanding of distant female role models in business and extending our understanding of their potential to generate sustainable and long-term change in advancing gendered change in management and leadership

Mobilising femininities in the workplace: offering intra-gender support as a way to make work ‘work’

Recent research has highlighted the negative intra-gender relations that occur between women in organisations, focusing on aspects such as micro-violence (Mavin & Williams, 2013), the queen bee syndrome (Derks, van Laar, Ellemars, & de Groot, 2011; Camussi & Leccardi 2005), negative intra-gender relations (Mavin et. al, 2014), and competition and distance between women (Mavin et. al, 2013; Cooper, 1997; Duguid, 2011). These studies have suggested that women’s intra-gender relationships are based on competition rather than co-operation, and argue that gendered organisational cultures exacerbate these negative intra gender relationships (Mavin, Williams & Grandy, 2014). However van den Brink & Benschop (2014) expand this conceptualisation by framing both the positive and negative aspects of women’s relationships within the context of ‘mobilising femininities’. They suggest that women mobilise femininities in both a contested and affiliated way. However affiliation presents risks to the individual as this affiliative behaviour is scrutinised in a way which their male colleagues is not. This growing body of research both overlooks the positive aspects of women’s relationships and ignores the impact that conservative feminists such as Sheryl Sandberg are having on discourse within organisations. Although Sandberg’s book has created lots of debate in the media, there has been little discussion in the academic community about the impact this conservative feminism has made (GWO 2016 Call for Abstracts, Exploring the Rise of Moderate Feminism in Contemporary Organizations) The aim of this paper is to further develop our understanding of women’s peer relationships and the way in which women mobilise femininities in the context of conservative feminism. This article draws upon empirical data from interviews with sixteen women asked to consider their intra-gender relationships at work. Eleven of the interviews were conducted with women who worked at a corporate bank and five were members of a women’s network and predominantly worked in small to medium sized enterprises. The interviews lasted between 40 and 70 minutes, they were recorded and transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The material shows that affiliation and mobilising femininities at work is an important part of the way women make work ‘work’ for them by providing a buffer from the dominant masculinities that prevailed. Women talked about the support and positive relationships they have being based on four themes. Firstly, ‘seeing the whole you’, this focussed on the importance of relationships that went beyond work, of being ‘tight’ and having conversations that were not work based. Secondly, a ‘mum’s network’, this involved a bond that came from being a mother or providing advice to those who were thinking about having children. The third involved ‘feedback’, the importance of using other women as a sounding board, giving each other feedback and helping each other to advance their careers. Finally, ‘I’ve got your back’, a conscious recognition of the need to support each other and defend each other against men and masculinities at work. However, there is a fine line between supportive relationships and the point at which women seek to create distance from each other. A critical engagement existed within the relationships as the women need to enact femininity in an appropriate way or they are penalised. Behaviour that prompted distancing from other women involved ‘over-mothering and smothering’, women who are over-feminised and smother people therefore holding them back and ‘not a real women’, women who were too polished or too closed off, described as corporate ‘cut outs’. The paper argues that women’s relationships can be conceptualised as a protection from the dominant masculinity that prevailed in their organisations and as a way to bring femininity to the workplace. Furthermore, it is argued that women emphasised the importance of fostering affiliative relationships. The paper thereby makes a contribution to understanding how women’s affiliation can be seen in the context of a growing acceptability of moderate feminism within the media and corporate world

Discord in the gender harmony: Mobilising femininities at work.

This article seeks to aid our understanding of gendered inclusion by looking at how femininities are mobilised at work. Whilst within the popular press there is a growing neo-liberal discourse about women supporting other women in organisations, little consideration has been given to men’s reactions to women aligning with each other, in other words, women mobilising femininities. Furthermore, whilst studies of doing gender have considered this from an individual viewpoint, we are unclear about how the collective doing gender differs from individuals doing gender. The aim of the article is therefore two-fold. First we consider how, for women, the individual aspects of doing gender differ from the collective aspects of doing gender and in what situations doing gender, or in this case doing femininities, differs from mobilising femininities. Secondly, we consider how men respond when women mobilise femininities as a way to resist the gender order and as a challenge to hegemonic masculinity. This has implications for understanding the conditions and bases of inclusion in contemporary organisations. The gendered order of organisations exists for men when; patriarchy is in place, men are enacting hegemonic masculinities, and women are in a subordinate position. We call this a ‘gender harmony’ and suggest that when women challenge this, the impact is ‘discord in the gender harmony’; a ripple in the still water of the gender balance which makes men aware of women’s presence and that something is occurring which is out of place or unusual. Drawing upon qualitative interviews with women managers in a corporate bank, we show how men react to this discord by becoming threatened by women’s behaviour and seeking to create conflict among women, in this way men have the power to include and exclude. However, when women are aligning and supporting each other in ways which offers no challenge to hegemonic masculinity, this behaviour goes unnoticed and is seen as ‘women being women’. The article makes the following contribution. First, we suggest that women draw on each other as a source of support, which adds protection from mobilised masculinity within organisations. Furthermore, our research suggests that women actively seek to promote and support other women succeeding within organisations and, in this way, they are doing femininities. Secondly, we extend the literature away from doing gender as an individual practice to consider how women collectively are doing gender. However, we found that men react to women mobilising femininities as they become aware of a disruption to gender harmony by seeking to create conflict among the women and becoming threatened by women’s affiliative behaviour. Finally, we make a contribution by conceptualising how mobilising femininities looks in practice and how this occurs in response to men mobilising masculinities. This has implications for women when they are seeking intra-gender support to challenge gender inequality and confirms men’s power to include and exclude

Femininities at Work: How Women Support Other Women in the Workplace

Recent research has highlighted the negative intra-gender relations that occur between women in organisations, focusing on aspects such as micro-violence, the queen bee syndrome, negative intra-gender relations, and competition and distance between women. Through a thematic analysis of interviews with 16 women, we draw on material where women were asked to consider their intra-gender relationships at work. We suggest that women are actively supporting each other and aligning themselves with each other; they are ‘mobilising femininities’ to help negotiate dominant hegemonic masculinity. However, the women also demonstrate contested femininities, creating distance from women who are not displaying an appropriate femininity. The article thereby examines the affiliated and contested femininities that women bring to bear in the workplace. It makes a contribution towards understanding mobilising femininities, the extent to which this is a conscious or liminal process for women and how, through mobilising femininities, gender as a social practice is demonstrated

The quality of equality: thinking differently about gender inclusion in organizations

Purpose: This article suggests a shift in thinking about how to improve gender inclusion in organisations, as well as offering a number of practical action points. Design/methodology/approach: This article takes a perspective based on the authors’ own ongoing research as well as synthesis of existing insights into gender inclusion in organisations. Findings: In order to retain top talent and improve organisational climate, we need to re-think how we measure the success of organisational inclusion policies. Specifically, the article suggests moving from numbers and targets to looking at the quality of gender inclusion in the workplace. The article explains why this shift in thinking is important, and how to approach it. Practical implications: The article provides strategic insights into and practical thinking about ways in which progressive organisations can continue to improve gender equality. Originality/value: The article makes a provocative call for a change of perspective on gender inclusion in organisations based on cutting-edge research, and puts forward action points in an accessible format

Exploring gendered inclusion in contemporary organisations - ESRC

The last three decades have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of women in work and the mainstreaming of the equal opportunities agenda. In this context, we are also witnessing a growth of postfeminist rhetoric, suggesting that gender workplace equality has been achieved and that women's progress now depends on individual capabilities, such as confidence levels, because structural barriers have been dismantled. In Sheryl Sandberg's words, women simply need to 'lean in' in order to succeed alongside their male colleagues. Despite this optimism, academic research continues to highlight disadvantage experienced by women in the workplace, such as the gendered pay gap, the glass ceiling, women's concentration in lower-paid industries and low representation at senior levels, comprising only 8.6 per cent of directors in large UK firms in 2015

Between Consumption, Accumulation, and Precarity: The Psychic and Affective Practices of the Female Neoliberal Spiritual Subject

Why do gig workers perceive work practices as aspirational in spite of their precarity? Selling beauty products through their networks appeals to many women as a convenient way to earn an income. Drawing on interviews and observations with women distributors of beauty products in a network marketing company, this article shows how aspirational messaging that appears spiritual is used to encourage these women to think and feel that they are in charge of their own destiny while making it difficult for those women to articulate the precarious conditions that are associated with such work. Practices that encourage those women to think in specific ways include internalising the right spiritual dispositions, developing as an entrepreneurial spiritual subject and selling the self. Women are also encouraged to feel in specific ways by monitoring how they feel about themselves and others. The article shows how ‘thinking rules’ and ‘feeling rules’ are used to construct an ideal female neoliberal spiritual subject in new forms of organising who is selling and consuming beauty products while aspirational-spiritual messaging makes it difficult to articulate precarity

A comparison of buoy meteorological systems

During May and June 2000, an intercomparison was made of buoy meteorological systems from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), and the Japanese Marine Science and Technology Center (JAMSTEC). Two WHOI systems mounted on a 3 m discus buoy, two PMEL systems mounted on separate buoy tower tops and one JAMSTEC system mounted on a wooden platform were lined parallel to, and 25 m from Nantucket Sound in Massachusetts. All systems used R. M. Young propeller anemometers, Rotronic relative humidity and air temperature sensors and Eppley short-wave radiation sensors. The PMEL and WHOI systems used R. M.Young self-siphoning rain gauges, while the JAMSTEC system used a Scientific Technology ORG-115 optical rain gauge. The PMEL and WHOI systems included an Eppley PIR long-wave sensor, while the JAMSTEC had no longwave sensor. The WHOI system used an AIR DB-1A barometric pressure sensor. PMEL and JAMSTEC systems used Paroscientific Digiquartz sensors. The Geophysical Instruments and Measurements Group (GIM) from Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) installed two Portable Radiation Package (PRP) systems that include Eppley short-wave and long-wave sensors on a platform near the site. It was apparent from the data that for most of the sensors, the correlation between data sets was better than the absolute agreement between them. The conclusions made were that the sensors and associated electronics from the three different laboratories performed comparably.Funding was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Grant Number NA96GPO429

Expression of SMARCD1 interacts with age in association with asthma control on inhaled corticosteroid therapy.

BackgroundGlobal gene expression levels are known to be highly dependent upon gross demographic features including age, yet identification of age-related genomic indicators has yet to be comprehensively undertaken in a disease and treatment-specific context.MethodsWe used gene expression data from CD4+ lymphocytes in the Asthma BioRepository for Integrative Genomic Exploration (Asthma BRIDGE), an open-access collection of subjects participating in genetic studies of asthma with available gene expression data. Replication population participants were Puerto Rico islanders recruited as part of the ongoing Genes environments & Admixture in Latino Americans (GALA II), who provided nasal brushings for transcript sequencing. The main outcome measure was chronic asthma control as derived by questionnaires. Genomic associations were performed using regression of chronic asthma control score on gene expression with age in years as a covariate, including a multiplicative interaction term for gene expression times age.ResultsThe SMARCD1 gene (SWI/SNF-related matrix-associated actin-dependent regulator of chromatin subfamily D member 1) interacted with age to influence chronic asthma control on inhaled corticosteroids, with a doubling of expression leading to an increase of 1.3 units of chronic asthma control per year (95% CI [0.86, 1.74], p = 6 × 10- 9), suggesting worsening asthma control with increasing age. This result replicated in GALA II (p = 3.8 × 10- 8). Cellular assays confirmed the role of SMARCD1 in glucocorticoid response in airway epithelial cells.ConclusionFocusing on age-dependent factors may help identify novel indicators of asthma medication response. Age appears to modulate the effect of SMARCD1 on asthma control with inhaled corticosteroids

RNA-Seq Transcriptome Profiling Identifies CRISPLD2 as a Glucocorticoid Responsive Gene that Modulates Cytokine Function in Airway Smooth Muscle Cells

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory respiratory disease that affects over 300 million people worldwide. Glucocorticoids are a mainstay therapy for asthma because they exert anti-inflammatory effects in multiple lung tissues, including the airway smooth muscle (ASM). However, the mechanism by which glucocorticoids suppress inflammation in ASM remains poorly understood. Using RNA-Seq, a high-throughput sequencing method, we characterized transcriptomic changes in four primary human ASM cell lines that were treated with dexamethasone—a potent synthetic glucocorticoid (1 µM for 18 hours). Based on a Benjamini-Hochberg corrected p-value <0.05, we identified 316 differentially expressed genes, including both well known (DUSP1, KLF15, PER1, TSC22D3) and less investigated (C7, CCDC69, CRISPLD2) glucocorticoid-responsive genes. CRISPLD2, which encodes a secreted protein previously implicated in lung development and endotoxin regulation, was found to have SNPs that were moderately associated with inhaled corticosteroid resistance and bronchodilator response among asthma patients in two previously conducted genome-wide association studies. Quantitative RT-PCR and Western blotting showed that dexamethasone treatment significantly increased CRISPLD2 mRNA and protein expression in ASM cells. CRISPLD2 expression was also induced by the inflammatory cytokine IL1β, and small interfering RNA-mediated knockdown of CRISPLD2 further increased IL1β-induced expression of IL6 and IL8. Our findings offer a comprehensive view of the effect of a glucocorticoid on the ASM transcriptome and identify CRISPLD2 as an asthma pharmacogenetics candidate gene that regulates anti-inflammatory effects of glucocorticoids in the ASM